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Tonight at yoga, I was struck again by my desire to teach. The class was being led by an old friend, a woman with whom I went to junior high and then lost touch with until we moved in to the same neighborhood. She’s held many jobs, including owning a pet care service, but being a yoga teacher clearly suits her. She’s only been doing it a few years, but she never appears lacking in confidence; her tone is that of the joy of giving.
What I would teach — writing through difficult situations, yoga to kids — is unclear to me. What I do feel is a strong and, I think, generous desire to share. And a knowledge that through teaching comes much learning. Despite this desire, I’ve been sitting on the fence, unable to actually turn this desire into action. This excerpt from the meditation teacher Sharon Salzburg helps me recognize this:
In order to practice, we have to surrender, we have to take a risk. Otherwise what we’re doing is standing back in order to judge, in order to feel superior. Often the obstacle is fear: we don’t think we’ll ever succeed. And so we’d rather stand apart and be cynical, to feel protected in that way, not having to try….
We need to be able to utilize the positive energy of wondering, of wanting to know the truth for ourselves and working to do that, and not get lost in cynicism or endless speculation.
…and trying to set intentions for it. Such fear I have and have had. Fear of money, especially. But I look at other fears that have not played out, like my fear of being alone. So, I should know — KNOW in some core place — that I’ll be ok. In going through old emails, I came across this poem that a yoga teacher read a few months back and which really resonated. I leave it as a little Solstice/Christmas gift.
Breaking All the Rules by Danna Faulds
There are moments when rules
are meant to be broken; when
bursting out of context is the
sole way to see with new eyes.
There are fences built only to
be torn down. The slats look
solid, but no one drove the nails
in tight. There are barricades
around the heart asking to be
breached. Sooner or later we
all run out of excuses for
staying small and safe.
I’ve had the song Seasons of Love from Rent in my head for the last twenty-four hours (that would be 1,440 minutes). Yesterday at, oh, about 3:06, my lawyer called me to tell me that my divorce was final. He’d just stood in front of the judge and everything was signed and sealed. It can be put away now, like Rosebud in the back of the museum.
I think of the past year and a half since we decided to get divorced. I think of the 15 years since we got married. I think of the eight and half years since becoming parents. Or of the 283 posts to this blog, which began in July 2008.
How do you measure time? In cups of coffee, the song suggests. It seems as good as any. How much laughter was there between us? A fare amount. How many fights? Not many, really. How much awkward silence. Lots – lots and lots and it’s one of those things that can’t be measured. How much disappointment? How much lack of trust?
Patterns repeat. Some can be shrugged away or softened with love. Some hit a groove and annoy and fester. We tried to massage our marriage with love, but it just kept hitting these bare spots; kept rubbing raw nerves.
******
I saw a photo of Alex with his sister taken over Thanksgiving. He looked more like his dad, a shrinking man of 70-something, than I’d ever noticed before. It humbled me; made me stop. Alex is growing old.
Last week, feeling so very sad and low, I asked C. if he would come over to my work place during his short lunch break. He brought sandwiches wrapped in plastic and we sat in the lobby of the university building where I work. We talked a bit, but then just sat in silence, holding hands, and looking out at the thin December light and the snow covering the Rodin sculpture in the courtyard. “I want to grow old together,” he leaned over and said. “We are,” I replied. “That’s exactly what we’re doing. Right now.” And because he understood the truth and the absurdity in this, C. broke out laughing. He laughed so hard and kissed me on the neck so much, that a young woman sitting nearby got up and moved, unable, I’d guess, to know what to do with this display by two older people.
“How do you measure the life of a woman or a man?” the song asks. “In truths that she learned or in times that he cried. In bridges he burned or the way that she died.”
I am so thankful to each of you who reads these words every day, once a week, once a month, now in a blue moon. Whatever. Having friends – known and unknown – out there on this journey has made it less scary. We all move into the dark woods – that’s what life is about. And yes, they’re scary, but there’s a lot of beauty, too.
I’m trying to see that there’s just as much beauty now that I have divorce records in hand as there was before. That I’m just as “good” and full of just as much possibility. I”m trying to find new ways to measure myself and my life.
Alex came over for Hannukah last night. He roasted a chicken and made latkes. I love his latkes. I ate too many and then took the rest over to the neighbors who are also semi-, quasi-, a-little-bit Jewish. I’d bought him a Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale at the store earlier, something he’d started drinking after we visited in England in, oh, round about ‘95. (Jesus!) I did homework with Thomas and violin with Bea while he cooked. It was the way I’d imagined Sunday dinners being for us, but due to one thing or another, we’ve hardly done them all fall. He’s been gone. Or I’ve been busy. Or we’ve been angry and uncomfortable.
Afterward, we talked about the lawyers and the money and tried to hash something out. I wrote an email to my lawyer – dictating aloud what I was typing so that he was in agreement. (His lawyer appears to have gone AWOL, or more aptly, cowboy – playing some game that none of the rest of us wants to be part of, so we’re appealing to my lawyer, who appears sane and whose kids go to my kids’ school and who went to summer camp with an old friend — all of which somehow seems to be on his side.) Thomas came over looking very worried. “Are you guys fighting?”
“Oh, sweetie. No. Actually, we’re doing a really good job of working through a very difficult thing together.”
I held my hand out and gestured for Alex to take it, which he did. Then I looked at Thomas and gestured for him to put his hand in ours. “We love you so much. I love Daddy, and he loves me, and we love you. We will always take care of you, together.”
I was well aware as I said this of how angry I’ve been with Alex as of late. Of how scared I am that he’s soon going to move away and break their hearts. Of how frustrated I get with his silence and passivity.
And yet, I also didn’t feel for a moment like I was telling a lie to my son.
So many layers of feelings. Such a tangle of intentions and memories, of responsibilities and desires. And our kids are at the center of that. They were borne from such goodness — and it is for them that we keep trying to remember the connections between us, to keep holding hands when it would be so much easier to run to different coasts, to change our phone numbers and hide away. Instead, we stay. For them, we look at ourselves and we do our best.
It’s so cold here – that kind of scary cold where you don’t want a loved one to break down on the side of a country road or your kids to dally too long after school. It hurts.
Yesterday was back and forth with the lawyer on email. He’d received changing numbers from Alex’s lawyer – numbers that don’t make sense; numbers that suddenly make the child support go way down. Then a call from Alex – he couldn’t get home last night - the roads were too bad – I would have to miss the party I was looking foward to. I asked him about the changing numbers, and he swore he had no clue what his lawyer was doing. Still, he said, “I cannot pay your new number [the number that is right according to the state equation]. I just don’t have it; what do you want me to do – make up money that simply isn’t there?”
What he doesn’t get – no matter how many times I tell him – is that I don’t have the money either. Still, whatever he doesn’t pay, I will find somewhere. Somehow. Beg, steal, lie. I won’t let the kids go without. He knows that, is my guess, at some elemental level. The same elemental level that will lead me to do whatever it takes. And I hate him for this. Hate him in a cold mean way that is matched only by what’s happening outside.
If I can find the time – a small, warm space replete of children and the ancient dog with her wanting eyes – here’s what I’m going to do to be with my anger, to be with sadness, to feed the demons.
I’d like to think I could get to the point where I’d be cool with the scenario described by this essayist. Where I could say, “Ok, that makes sense.” But I’m not there. I cannot even fathom it right now without tears and scarring.
Scratch that last post. All I want for Christmas is to be divorced. I signed the papers, just before Thanksgiving. And then – after I’d signed, after Alex had signed – my lawyer came up with a new number for child support. A number devised based on the state’s equation, yes, but a new number nonetheless. How the number just before that and the one before that were devised – presumably using the same equation – just gives me greater reason to dislike and distrust math. Slippery stuff it is, as Bea is learning.
And so now I have this number that is in essence fair but feels unfair because it was re-run after everything was signed. Alex only found out about this yesterday and is not happy. In fact, he sounds desperate about it, unable as he is to pay it. I understand. I empathize. And I feel like I’ve somehow played dirty. The whole thing sucks. And yet, the kids need the money, and if the number is right, shouldn’t I ask for it?
Meanwhile, the clock ticks on the house refinancing, which is tied to the divorce, and needs to be done by the 16th if this month’s Really Scary mortgage payment is to be avoided. I so just want to curl up with a blankie over my head and eat bowl after bowl of the steamed oatmeal I had in New York. Instead, it’s a snow day and I’ll be home with kids. Baking. Making presents. Being festive. Can’t you hear the cheer?
Got the cards in the mail today. Bought big bundles of sugar, flour, butter and eggs — the baking will ensue imminently. A “possibly historic snow storm” is predicted for tomorrow. The kids awoke to a dusting of snow this morning and asked, quite excitedly: Is it winter now?
In trying to get my house ready for the season — and feeling as though I am failing miserably at it, no matter how exhausted I am each night — I keep waiting for some spunky grandfatherly fix-it man to appear, someone who wants nothing more to do with his copious free time than to put insulation in the crawl space under my ill-placed hot water heater, take down screens and put up storms, remove the remaining summer stuff from my yard — all for the price of cocoa and hot bowls of soup and games of checkers with my kids. Such a man, however, does not appear to exist. Not in this corner of Iowa, at least.
In lieu of this – and when I’m not beating myself up over the insulation or my lack of a job come late-January – I’m working on my Single Mom Christmas List. Hold the diamonds, thanks very much. And perfume makes me sneeze. This is a much humbler list than all that.
10. An official pet door opener, feeder and walker. My dog and cat are driving me nuts. Two more creatures that NEED me. They can live here, but could someone else just deal with them? I’m especially annoyed by the way in which they sense when I’ve finally sat down – something I do very little of – and one of them suddenly requires the door to the outside be opened.
9. A half-day long bath in a giant perpetually hot tub with a VIEW and a stack of magazines and books. Calgon really did know of what they spoke.
8. A night in this bed. I don’t know where it is. I just found it while trying to find bathtub pictures, and I fell in love. I can tell it’s warm there – but not hot. The sound of crickets or waves or a burbling creek is outside. The smells are fresh. The food eaten near here is fresh and cooked by someone with love and wit. The best night’s sleep ever could be had here. I am sure of this.
7. Healthy, yummy school lunches. We qualify for free school lunch, but a lot of good this does us when pretty much every day is a meaty, greasy, sugar-laden mess. My kids choose one meal a week off the menu, and sometimes they have a hard time finding that much. This means, that every morning – while yelling sweetly encouraging missives to them — “Please brush your hair!” ”Put your homework in your backpack!” ”Eat your oatmeal – NOW!” — I’m in the kitchen trying to put together a lunch that doesn’t completely resemble yesterday’s lunch and which covers at least a few of the food groups. Some days, I fail miserably – a bag of cold cereal, a dill pickle, and a box of raisins stolen from the Halloween bag. My friend Tonya and I call these “Orphan Lunches” and they’re the days when I feel as though my kids have “Single Mother” written on their foreheads in Sharpie. Need more convincing? Watch Ann Cooper on TED.
6. More babysitters! Better babysitters. Fun babysitters. Clever babysitters. Babysitters without anything else on their schedules! Babysitters who will work out of the goodness of their hearts. (Ok, here’s what I’m really wishing for but am generally too fearful to utter aloud: A grandmother who would ever ever ever put her grandkids to bed.)
5. More yoga. I manage to get to a class once a week – and this, my friends, is just not enough. I know I should be glad for this, proud even, but I’m sorry – it’s not enough. While I’m not suggesting a move to LA, I am pretty sure that if I could go to Bryan Kest’s yoga classes twice a week – or even one of his and one of another topnotch class in the area – that I’d be a changed woman. A calmer, happier woman. My house might even somehow be neater, just through proximity to my absolute relaxed self.
4. Writers who craft stuff like this should be hired less, and people who write earnest, heartfelt pieces like this should get more and better paying work. (Ok, that was all a bit self-serving.)
3. Paid junkets to Paris. Really, you need an explanation? Look at this image. Even in a driving rainstorm, I can taste the glass of red wine and the piping hot perfect omelet.
2. Someone to cook. Someone to cook with. Someone to cook for me. Someone to love food and cookbooks and to create dishes that aren’t kid-friendly. These qualities are definitely what I miss the most about Alex. My life – or at least my tummy – was richer with a cook in the house. In the meantime, I troll Chowhound when I can’t sleep.
1. By far my biggest need and the thing that keeps me awake at night is my need for a 3/4 time job with benefits that uses at least some of my multiple talents. We hear over and over and over that American workplaces are deaf when it comes to the needs of families. I’d say that’s doubly true for the 40% of American families led by a single mom, or the 2/3s of households in which women are the primary or co-breadwinner. (For more stats, see The Shriver Report, which came out a few months ago) We need to make a decent wage — you know, enough to eat and maybe get a new roof put on and just possibly to save a tad, too. We desire to do so in a manner that actually uses our talents – of which we have many. We possess college degrees and past work experience, not to mention the vast array of managerial skills the average mother learns on the job. But we also need to be present for our kids. And doing so is a win-win for everyone. I can put my kids in an afterschool program a few days a week, but every day? And before school, too? If I were to get the average full time job in my area, that would mean 8-5 hours (we’re Puritanical in Iowa), which would translate to having my kids at school nearly an hour before the doors open, and picking them up two and a half hours after school. After our joyful reunion, we’d speed home to quickly make dinner and cram in home work, all during which I’d be in a lovely mood. I’m sorry. But no. No, no, no. IN lieu of this, I”m currently applying for jobs in the $10/hour range – jobs that allow me to work when my kids are in school and be home with them when they’re not. Jobs that will leave us eligible for Free Lunch for years to come and jobs that really don’t utilize my 4-page resume. There’s got to be a more humane solution. Again, I’m not even asking for the tiniest cuticle of a Goldman Sachs bonus. Just living wages. That’s my greatest wish for 2010. And, I fear, for 2011. And 2012. And ….
Cold and tired. I guess we are nearing the solstice. It’s been good to have the kids back after they were away with Alex and his family for six days on the east coast. It was odd to see the photos posted on FB of them with the cousins who I now realize I won’t see grow up – except in photos. As an only child, they were my only chance at ever being an aunt. Nor will I meet the new boyfriends and girlfriends of Alex’s younger cousins. But I also won’t have another fight with Alex while at his family’s, or feel like the odd bird out – the non-Jew, the non-suburbanite.
While they were away, I got together with friends one night — all PTA moms who were counting up results of the fall fundraiser together. There was wine and I’d just come from signing my divorce papers, so I raised my glass, told them the news. The only other person there who is divorced, said, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” And I could see from her furrows brow how deeply she meant it. She would never go back to her ex and is very happy with a new man, but she knows the ways in which a divorce is never over, the ways in which kids always pine for what was or what might have been, and how even the adults involved wonder if there was another option.
Was it my fault that we fought when we visited Alex’s family? Did I not try enough to fit in? Was I not a loving enough aunt? I know – silly questions. Such small things. And yet all part of the incomplete whole.
Boy, this sure struck a nerve.
Vanishing Point
by Freya Manfred
The moment arrives when you say,
“I don’t dislike this man,
but how did I marry him?”
Something about his wintry voice,
the way he can’t or won’t show his face,
and how small and alone you feel
out here on earth’s curve,
driving day and night,
never reaching a destination,
until you realize you’re running parallel to him,
and you’ll never meet.
Yesterday I stopped by my lawyer’s office and signed the stipulation. My lawyer wasn’t there. Alex wasn’t there.Not even the entire stipulation was there – just that one page needing my signature and the date. Just me and a notary in a festive sweater. It was the definition of anti-climactic.
A few hours later, I drove the kids and Alex to the airport in a menacing rainstorm. At one point, as I squinted at the nearly indecipherable windshield, Alex said, “I just wanted you to know that I signed today.” ”Yeah, me too.” Pause. Then Thomas from the back seat: ”Do you think we should really be flying in this?” Good question, Thomas. Good question.
So it seemed done. But then today – a flurry of emails from my lawyer, who clearly isn’t concerned that tomorrow is Thanksgiving. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, he’s suddenly found ways to get the child support up. It’s now nearly double what it was a month ago — or even days ago, for that matter. It’s at a number, that while still low feels within the realm of the possible, within the realm of Realism. We have left Kafka-esque behind and are inching toward do-able. I am sighing with relief. And, dare I say, celebrating?
Tonight at the grocery store, I bought cheap hot house flowers and champagne. I am taking a bath later. I am saying thanks that this whole process is coming to some end. We are entering a new phase, moving from divorcing to divorced. A phase that will bring its own challenges, but a different phase. And for that, I am definitely thankful.
Too much. Toooooo much is on my mind. And it’s not turkey. Here’s a sampling from the swamp that is my emotional innards.
A medical condition – if you will – and other people’s reaction to it. To which I just want to scream (yes, scream – I’m not feeling particularly nice): ”Mind your own bees wax! Go out and get your own condition and do with you will with it; but as for me and my body – hands off, and most definitely, opinions off!” Grrrr….
Work work work and applying for jobs – dreamed last night of making my way through a wooden and vined mazed in the middle of a gorgeous housing complex from 18th c. England. A very successful and beautiful friend was in the lead; I was bringing up the rear of our small party. The “prize” at the end was a job – a perfect job that would make me very happy. Even though I kept hoisting myself over every wall, scraping my knees and bloodying my elbows in the process, it was clear that I was not going to be rewarded with a job at the end.
Ahimsa – part of a code of conduct in a number of traditions, including yoga, Buddhism, and Jainism – which demands that we do no violence toward others. Many people have used ahimsa as reason for practicing vegetarianism, and it’s certainly used as a reminder of kindness toward others. But what I’ve been meditating on is the practicing of nonviolence toward ourselves. I’ve been thinking about this, because frankly, I suck at it!
Children on planes – my kids are flying out east with their dad tomorrow night and will be gone for a week. I’m an inveterate flyer, as are they. I’m proud of the fact that can practically do 21st century airport security with their eyes closed. Bea even reminded me this morning to buy tiny bottles for the solution she needs to take to clean her new pierced ears because the bottle she has is too big for airport security. But suddenly I have visions of airplanes falling from the sky. I have visions of no vision of them ever again. And it stops me cold.
Cooking a birthday dinner for my ex – This fun, fun, fun event is tonight. And, I’m sad to admit dear reader, that it was my idea. It somehow seemed like the right thing to do. Now, however, that I’m not eating meat, that I”m broke, that I need to work late at my job, and that I need to go out and buy tiny bottles, it’s an idea that seems particular poor in timing and, well, in my earnest desire to see it through.
Kick boxing – the need to take out some very real, very physical anger is looming large. I’ve always walked away from anger – considered it a lesser emotion, one that a better person would not linger in. The Dalai Lama does not get angry, so neither will I. But at the moment, I’m marinating in the stuff – like some white trash turkey swimming in PBR – and I need to find a way to do battle with it. Suggestions?
Ok, the old dog needs to be walked. I promised my son I’d bring him a PB & J because he doesn’t like the school lunch selection after all. And I”m late for work.
Slipping
On my shoes,
Boiling water,
Toasting bread,
Buttering the sky:
That should be enough contact
With God in one day
To make anyone Crazy.
- Hafiz
Abstaining from the “patience pills” I’ve been taking for five years now.
Abstaining from meat after a calzone in New York City filled with four different kinds of animal product left me cold – and sick.
And I spent several weeks abstaining from touch.
I’ve momentarily considered abstaining from sugar and alcohol, but this weekend’s brownies and two glasses of Shiraz indicate that’s probably not immiment.
I’m re-embracing sexual touch, but feel a long-time disassociation coming on from the former two. I’m following my heart – and my gut – and wondering where it will lead. A healthier me? A happier me? A more me me? I’m not in unknown territory, but it always takes awhile to remember what it’s like. And of course, I’m not the same me. (“The same me” – hold that thought… we’ll get to that more in a moment.)
I didn’t eat meat for nearly a decade, but when I got pregnant with Thomas, I started craving it. Preferably covered in mustard. Suddenly, I was having hamburgers every other night after years of not even accepting soup with chicken broth. As for anti-depressants, my first go-round with them came at age 30. After years of talk therapy, my very caring therapist had to admit that the fact that I had to stop at the end of every lap while swimming in order to empty my goggles of tears was something that might warrant extra treatment. She sent me to a psychiatrist who, as pretty much was the case circa 1995, prescribed Prozac. When I came back to see her two weeks later and she asked if I was feeling better, I said it was hard to tell. “Do you feel more you?” she asked, clearly not understanding that she was dealing with a writer who could have riffed on that question all day. What is “you”? What is “more” you? Is a happier you necessarily a more real you? Perhaps the girl who was filling her swimming goggles was the realest you possible.
For now, I’m remembering that I cry a lot more easily when I’m not on anti-depressants. I cried all over New York. I cried last night. I shudder and sob and am amazed that that well still exists. I’m also shorter of patience. And I’m not long on it to begin with. So this is my work. This is the part of the “real me” that needs to recognize her limitations and find ways to stop and breathe and be with the feeling. To not necessarily push it away, but to see if she can also be with it in a tender enough way while remaining drug-free. (And yes, in such moment, I entirely get that a glass of wine becomes a drug. A plate of brownies is a drug.)
I guess the art of abstinence is not about suffering but about winnowing away the barriers to seeing ourselves. When you’ve drunk to the last drop and there’s nothing left to pour, what is left?
I have been traveling—away from my kids for about five days. Over the weekend, Alex sent me photos he took of them and they looked HUGE—Bea especially. Suddenly, she looks on the cusp of adolescence. So big, so fast. How could this have happened? If I blink, will they suddenly be in college? Last week, holding a friend’s 8-week old baby in New York was another reminder of how much they’ve grown – how much we’ve changed as a family. “It must seem like you were here just yesterday,” said my friend as she breastfed baby Juniper. “Actually, no. It feels like eons ago.”
Eons since I grappled with a stroller. Eons since I fretted over the meaning, or lack thereof, of an infant’s tears. Eons since breast milk bottles sat upside down next to the sink, cleaned and ready to be used again. Eons since I’d dealt with that weird yellow poo that stains the backsides of newborns’ onesies.
Eons. That’s also how I felt when I opened this photo of my dad with Bea and Thomas. I was cleaning up my computer desktop and came across it, then had to do the math: Christmas four years ago. Four months before he died. I can parse the numbers so many other ways: Five and a half years after Bea was born. A year after Alex and I first separated. Forty years after my first Christmas with my dad. Nine months after he was diagnosed. Numbers. Irrelevant really. They’re easy to focus on, to stare at them and try to learn something from them. But like my kids’ current ages or weights or heights, they are irrelevant. What matters is the reminder – hard but in some ways incredibly sweet – that nothing stays the same, all is changing, every second.
I just got off the phone from talking with Alex. The divorce should be final this week, if all goes ok. Neither of us really understands the process, but we’ve each done our bit and there’s nothing left to hold it up. A four-month legal process. A 16-month process from separation to the final final. Or, do I start the clock on April 30, 1994 – the day we got married?
Math. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re now in a different space with each other – discussing our kids, his work, my work, our elderly dog. It’s a relationship that will continue as long as each of us is alive – be that four months, four years, or four decades. But its tenor, its purpose is changed. And I guess it will change again. And again. At some essential level, that’s ok.
I still forward more NY TImes articles to Alex than anyone else. I wonder if this will still be the case ten years from now. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised. Or sad.
…more reasons to get along with my ex.
“Yet a mother’s support of the father turns out to be a critical factor in his involvement with their children, experts say — even when a couple is divorced.” from today’s NYTimes, Fathers Gain Respect from Experts (and Mothers)
Life has me in her grip. So much going on as I feel my small boat rocked on the ocean. Confident that I’ll get to shore, but like Max, not sure where I’ll end up. So today, pictures only. Beautiful images to get us all through.
I do. Yes, me. Pragmatic me.
Tonight is a reading by my friend Hope Edelman from her new memoir, The Possibility of Everything. In the book, she and her husband take their daughter to Belize where Maya is treated by shaman healers. It’s an adventure tale, for sure, but more so the book is about faith. It’s an exploration of what we can allow ourselves to trust. Where and when can we let go, even a little bit, and let powers beyond ourselves support us?
“Trust the Universe,” is a phrase that annoys me. (And Hope, it seems from her book, agrees – or agreed.) I take this phrase as be code for “give up trying.” And I’m all about trying. I work really really really hard to keep everything going. Too hard, some would say. But if I stop, then what would happen? It would be as though The Universe (ah, yeah, that again!) would see me not working hard enough and any little bit of goodness it was thinking of sending my way would evaporate. This is my fear: stop and all will collapse. Keep going, and I’ll eventually be rewarded.
After this January, I have no idea where I’m earning my income. The temporary job I have ends then. The local job market is as dry as it is everywhere else, and relatively small as my town is only 60,000 souls. So the reality of poverty – along with my anger over the child support pittance – can wake me up at night. This giant worry I’ll call Financial Woe, comes and sits on the side of my bed and hisses fear in my ears. Many nights, she is there, coiling her long legs around mine and not letting me come up for air. “It’s all going to collapse,” she snarls. “The worst is going to happen.” She is sure. And by 4:30 am, I am sure, too. What “the worst” is, I don’t exactly know. It’s a feeling. A color. A shape. Nothing concrete. Just utter fear and failure.
But then, as if by magic, there are days like yesterday when I’m sure it’s all going to work out. Some time in early January, just in the nick of time – maybe even in early February – something will appear in my lap – some job or project. It may be just enough, or it may be bigger and better than anything I can imagine right now. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it will appear. And that experience – just like so many others like it I’ve had over the years – will help me to extend my belief in the possibility of everything. Again. Little by little, step by step, this Pragmatist has been becoming a believer. Walking just like Indiana Jones across the invisible divide. Getting up every morning, knowing even on my darkest days, that somewhere, somehow, it will work out. That hissing lady is still there, and it may take years longer for me to totally rid her from my life; but in the meantime, I’m doing better at floating – laying my head back and knowing that the water will hold me.
Can anyone explain the math involved in child support payments? How is it that a father can be told by the state to pay $225 a month for two kids when the mother makes less than he does and has the children 5 nights/week, and also pays for 90% of their food, 75% of their clothing, all of their incidentals (e.g., toothpaste, birthday gifts, violin rental, laundry detergent) and does 95% of the work involved in keeping them going, e.g., appearing civilized and moderately groomed, getting their homework done, arriving in the right place at somewhat the right time. It seems to me that the courts ASSUME that somehow the mother will come up with the rest of the money that the $225 does not cover in monthly expenses — whether it means borrowing or working crap jobs that take her away from her kids or renting out more and more of her house. How this adds up to make any kind of sense whatsoever is beyond me.
